(banjo music, cows moo)
- Hi there! Welcome to the farm.
It's time again for our annual book club lunch.
I'm gonna be gathering some ingredients for the lunch
from Tavis's Mushrooms up in Cumberland,
and then it's down to Osceola
to the Philadelphia Community Farm for some vegetables.
But first, I've got Dr. Jay coming out
to help me dehorn some calves.
Gather with us Around the Farm Table .
I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
(cow moos)
- all: Gather with us
Around the Farm Table .
- Inga: A few years ago, I moved up to Wisconsin.
I started an organic dairy farm at St. Isidore's Mead.
That's when I discovered the abundance
of Midwestern local food and small-scale farmers,
growing everything from green zebra tomatoes
to pasture pork.
I'm taking a break from the cows,
hittin' the road,
and seein' if I can't satisfy my epicurious appetite.
That's great.
This is amazing.
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Morning, Inga. - Inga: Hey, Jay.
(cow moos)
I wanna get some dehorning done.
And there's a little bit of controversy is seems
that surrounds dehorning, when I have people out to the farm,
and they think, "Ah, it's kind of scary".
- These horns, if they're left on animals,
they actually become weapons. - Sure.
- The animals had these horns at one point
to defend themselves, as well as their calves
from predators.
But the way we've raised animals and confined them today,
the horns are usually more detrimental then they are
of benefit to the animal.
- I have a few cows that love to come up to me
when I'm out in the pasture
and just scratch their heads against my legs,
and I'm glad that I dehorn them
'cause I think that could really be painful for me.
- Jay: Yeah, and what's "playing" to a cow
is often painful to a human.
- Exactly.
Now, is there a better time to dehorn the calves?
- The younger the animal is, the better.
The horn starts out as a very small bud.
As that animal grows, the horn gets larger.
It's more tissue that has to removed.
And it becomes more involved
with the bone of the skull, as well.
So, usually the younger the animal is,
the less painful it is.
- Do you see any dairy farms using "polled genetics?"
- Some do, whether they're conventional or organic.
"Polled" refers to animals that actually
are born without horns or the tissue to grow the horns.
And it's a simple dominant gene.
It's very easy to select for it.
But animals that have had this gene in the past
usually have produced less milk or fat or protein levels,
so that's why it hasn't been as widely adopted
in dairy breeds as it has in many of our beef breeds.
A lot of our production parameters
have become very efficient,
so polledness is kind of like the icing on the cake.
If they can get an animal that propagates those genes,
as well as a good production,
then it's just something else that can be marketed.
As well as advantageous because with them,
we don't have to do this procedure anymore either.
- All right, well let's get started with the calves.
(happy banjo music)
I'm gonna finish up here with Jay,
and then let's go up and invite the author
of our book club selection this month,
Nickolas Butler, down for lunch.
Hey, Nick, how are you doing? - Hey, Inga, how are you?
- Good. Good to see you. - Good to see you, too.
- My book club just finished Shotgun Lovesong .
We loved it, and we were hoping
to have you down to our annual book club lunch.
- Oh, I'd love that, Inga,
my family and I are huge fans of the show,
so, yeah, I'd be honored.
- Oh, good, good, good.
Well, this is gonna be great then.
I hope that the meal turns out perfect.
- I hope so, too.
- What kind of inspiration do you draw on
from living in Wisconsin, with your writing?
- Yeah, I mean I think an obvious thing
is the landscape and the seasons,
but a big thing for me is sense of family,
friends, being part of a community.
And in this book, I was interested in exploring
what small town community looks like
and how friendships sort of changed
and evolved over the years.
- Sure, yeah.
I'm not from Wisconsin, originally,
and living here, it is really all those things you just said.
I mean, I've never felt this much community
in anywhere I've ever lived.
And just the changing of the seasons.
I think it's,
it has to inspire you because you're just so--
for me anyway--
I'm so excited to get through the spring, and still be alive.
- Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, I feel the same way.
It can be kind of hard as a writer, frankly,
when summer rolls around,
and the last thing you wanna do is be stuck inside
behind your computer.
But then winter is great for that.
My dad always used to tell me
that the Russians were the best novelists
because they had these long winters to stay inside and work.
But, yeah, I think fall, for me, is the best.
It's dramatic.
I love the temperature.
So I love Wisconsin seasons.
- One thing you just said,
people must say to you a lot,
"It must amazing to be a writer."
And people come to me a lot and say,
"Oh, I wish I could just be a farmer."
But I think what you just said is
a lot of it is sitting down and writing,
and a lot of what I do is just cleaning up manure,
so I don't think we have the glamorous lives.
- Writing can be cleaning up manure, too.
I mean, there's a lot of bad sentences that come out.
But, no, I mean I think the most important thing
is that everyone can write.
Most of us can read.
So the hard work ends up being just sitting down
in front of your computer and doing the work
when you don't want to,
when you're tired at the end of the day,
when you've worked a long job,
or when your kids have worn you out, or whatever it is,
and you just have to,
you have to be obsessed with it.
It has to be what you wanna do most.
- Similar to farming.
- Yeah, yeah, right. It's a passion.
- Well, great, Nick.
I'm looking forward to seeing you later on.
Give me a couple hours to get ingredients and get lunch made.
Come on down when you're ready. - Sounds good. Thanks, Inga.
- Well, let's head on up to Cumberland
to pick up some mushrooms from Tavis's Mushroom Farm,
and then we'll head on down to Philadelphia Community Farm
for some vegetables for our lunch.
(banjo strumming)
Well, I've made it up to Cumberland,
and I'm excited to talk to Tavis
about how to grow amazing mushrooms.
And I'm really excited about taking them home
and having them be one of the star ingredients
in today's lunch.
(banjo music)
Hi there, Tavis. How are you?
- Hi, Inga, I'm good.
- This is the most magical woodlands I've ever been in.
- Well, thank you. - Beautiful.
It's a lot bigger than what I thought.
How much mushrooms are you growing here?
- We'll do about 8,000 to 10,000 pounds this year.
- That's quite a bit.
And it takes a team, right?
- I've got a team of about 10 people right now.
- Now, this is mushrooming is kind of a generational thing
for you isn't it? - It is.
My father learned from his mother.
I learned from him,
and my daughter learns from me.
- That's great. I love a family business.
Now, tell me a little bit about it,
This is something that's always interested me.
I'm a mushroom novice,
but how do you start growing mushrooms?
Like, if I was going to do it in my backyard.
- We harvest these logs in the winter
when the wood is dormant and alive.
Tavis: We store it until spring.
And then we push in mushroom spawn
into about 60 holes that we've drilled in the logs.
Wax them shut.
Let them incubate for a year,
and then the mushrooms will fruit the following spring.
- Why do you wax them shut?
- It keeps out invading microorganisms.
And it keeps water in.
- And then you just wait, and you get mushrooms.
- Then you wait.
- How often do you harvest the mushrooms?
- They'll fruit heavily like this about six times per year.
- It's pretty labor-intensive though,
'cause it's all hand-done?
- With this many logs, it's constant.
It's almost daily.
- How did you choose the varieties
of mushrooms that you're growing?
- Flavor. - Yeah.
- Yeah, shiitake's a favorite, so I definitely wanted that.
We do a wine cap mushroom also,
I did that because it's easy and it's quick.
And then I do an oyster mushroom just because of demand.
- And they're beautiful, too, aren't they?
- Gorgeous, yes.
- I'm here to pick up some mushrooms.
When I take them home
or if somebody's at the farmers market
and they get mushrooms from you there,
how do you store them?
- Cool, dry place.
A brown bag or a basket works great.
- Okay. - Refrigerator.
- So, easy... I don't have to be too intense
and the flavor's still going to be there.
- No, and they've got a shelf-life of about 30 days.
- That's quite a long time.
People can just come to the farm to get the mushrooms from you
or where do you sell?
- A lot of out-the-front-door sales.
I've got a couple farmers markets,
one in Barron, one in Cumberland.
And then, a few restaurants in the area.
- Wow, what a great way to make a living. - Yeah.
- Well, I'm going to grab some mushrooms from you, so I can
get back and make some lunch. - Fantastic.
(banjo playing)
- Good afternoon. - Hi, welcome Inga.
- How are you doing today? - Doing well.
- The pigs are looking cute in here
with all the greenery and flowers.
- Christine: They are growing.
I think they'll have this mowed down in no time, actually.
- Well, I wanted to stop by.
I'm gathering some ingredients for a lunch
that I'm putting on later,
but I want to know a bit more about your farm,
because it's a different style of farm, really.
- Community is really what it's built around,
and we have been a non-profit since 1989.
So, that allows us to have a lot of education,
so folks come here and take part in the gardening,
take workshops,
and hold their own retreats.
- And what a great space to be able to be in.
The energy here at the farm-- - It's a healing space.
- It's so wonderful and calm.
- Ever since the '20s, it used to be owned by a doctor,
and he brought people here to convalesce
and retreat and get well.
- Oh, I feel healthier just arriving.
Well listen, I gotta get back to the farm,
so can you walk me to where the vegetables are?
- Yeah, let's go find Farmer Carter up in the garden.
(slow banjo)
At the beginning, the farm
had a social justice aspect to it.
And now, we reinvigorated it with the practical arts,
and training of our interns whom we live and work with.
So, right now we have four young people on site
training as farmers and gardeners.
And also some classes in wellness and spirituality
which work really well for the farm.
- And this must be the vegetable guy.
- Here's Farmer Carter.
- Hi. - Hi there, how are you doing?
- I'm good. good. - Good.
I've come to find out more about vegetables
and maybe get some for lunch.
- Excellent. Come this way.
-Nice to talk to you, Christina. - Thank you.
- So, one of the important things for you here at your farm
is being biodynamic? - Mm-hmm.
- How is that different
from being certified organic or anything else?
- Well, that's a good question
and I hear that a lot.
In a nutshell, biodynamic farming,
I guess you could say,
it's organic farming with a bit of a spiritual twist.
- So you said there was differences between
biodynamic farming and say, organic farming,
or conventional farming.
Can you give me an example of how it's different?
- Well, actually right here, we have an example
of one of the differences.
Biodynamic farming...
- It's a horn!
- We try to gather in some of the cosmic energy
that's all around us to use in our farm.
To help our farm be a healthier, more dynamic farm.
And one of the way we do that is we'll take a horn like this,
we'll pack it full of raw cow manure.
And then, we'll bury it in the ground in the fall.
And then, this horn will stay all winter long
under the ground.
It'll gather in these cosmic forces that go around
like in a big vortex all the way down
to the compost that's down at the bottom of the horn.
And then this time of year, we dig these up
and gather this material,
and then we use this in our preparations
to go out on our field to help our farm
be a nice, healthy, active farm.
- So, you're just spreading around the energy of the farm? - Yes.
- Now, who started the concept of biodynamic farming?
- It was a guy by the name of Rudolph Steiner.
He was a guy from Europe.
He was born in Austria. He did a lot of work in Germany.
Steiner was the same guy who developed
the Waldorf Education.
- Waldorf. Okay, that's right.
Now what kind of a record keeping system
do you have to have
to kind of prove that
you're biodynamic?
- To be certified biodynamic, it's a very similar system
as the organic,
what it would take to be certified organic.
- So, just tons of writing things down.
- Yes, yes.
- Have you seen the real benefits to your farm
because of the biodynamic or do you see benefits
to yourself and the interns
and just the life-cycle of your farm?
- It's a nice practice for me to be involved in.
That's what I'm shooting for right now.
- Well, that's wonderful.
Well, the guys that I'm making lunch for
are going to get a kick out of the fact that they have
this wonderful cosmic energy going into their food.
And I think it's going to make it taste extra delicious.
- Excellent.
- You've got this CSA here.
I'm hoping to see what you guys have in your spring boxes
and take some back for lunch.
- Sure. Let's go take a look.
(relaxing banjo music)
- The asparagus looks great, Carter.
And I just have one more question about biodynamic.
I'm really kinda getting interested in this now,
It's kind of fun thought.
How does the calendar affect the farming,
the planting cycle?
'Cause that's a thing, isn't it?
- Yeah, that's another biodynamic principle
is that certain parts of the plant
are affected by the certain positions
of the bodies that are up in the sky at night,
the moon, and the planets, and the constellations.
So, some alignments affect the roots.
Some affect the leaf.
And some effect the flowers, fruit.
And so, we use our special calendar to
line things up and plant things in the right order.
- I'd like to add a little more color to my lunch.
By any chance, is there anything in the greenhouse
that's a little bit brighter in color?
- Like Sungold cherry tomatoes? - That would be perfect.
- Sure. Let's go look.
(banjo music)
- These are fantastic.
They're going to look beautiful with my lunch.
Speaking of lunch, we've got to get back to the farm
so we can get everything ready before the guys arrive.
There's over a thousand wild mushroom varieties
here in the state of Wisconsin.
300 of those are perfectly edible, fine to eat.
300 are also poisonous.
There's over 400 that are unknown
and five varieties are deadly.
So, before you go out in the woods and start collecting,
make sure that you find a guy like Tavis to teach you the difference.
Since I don't know the difference, that's why I went
right to Tavis to get these beautiful shiitake mushrooms
we're using today.
I wanted to really showcase the shiitakes in a recipe,
so I decided on a simple mushroom soup.
That way the flavor can really come out, and stand on its own.
To start with, we're going to dice an onion,
and add some garlic,
and get this soup off to a good start.
Set your soup pot over medium heat,
and then add a little bit of oil.
And then, just slide the onions right in the pan
and get them cooking.
And that's going to make your house smell amazing.
Okay, I think I'm going to do
two cloves of garlic for the soup, maybe three.
Maybe we'll go three, since I just need
to get rid of it here.
And then, just dice these up.
All right, and give your onions a stir here.
This is like a first step in creating
the flavor base of this soup.
So, I like the onions that kinda caramelize to the bottom
and give me a little bit of a layer to work with.
Smells good.
Okay, add the garlic.
Okay, and now for the mushrooms.
With the shiitake mushrooms, the stems can be pretty tough,
so you don't want to add those to the soup, or else,
even after we puree the soup down,
you're gonna be getting chunks
of shiitake stalk
and it's just not gonna be a great experience.
So, they're easy enough to pull off,
so it's no big deal.
And look at this.
It's just a beautiful color.
And they are just so fresh feeling and smelling,
and I think this is going to be a fantastic soup.
So once you've got the stems off,
go ahead and cut them up pretty small.
That's going to help puree it nicely.
Although, when you puree the soup,
you don't want to puree it all the way down
because a few chunks are nice.
It makes it feel homemade.
Now that the onions and the garlic have cooked down a bit,
I can start adding my mushrooms to the pot.
I'm just getting them going.
I can actually smell the mushrooms,
the earthiness of the mushrooms is coming wafting up,
not overpowering the garlic and onion smell,
but it's definitely standing out,
which is just so neat.
It's so nice working with really fresh ingredients.
It's a game-changer.
When people come to my house for dinner,
they're like "Ah, that's really good.
"You must have been cooking all your life."
No, I just use really good ingredients.
All right, now we'll stir in the mushrooms
and let them cook down for 10 minutes
and we'll see how it goes from there.
As the mushrooms cook down,
they're going to release some of the moisture,
and that's what you're looking for.
You want that moisture to evaporate
so the flavors can condense,
giving it a better flavor for the soup.
The mushrooms have cooked down.
They've almost reduced by half,
and now we can start building the other flavors of the soup.
So, there's gonna be a little bit of brown bits
at the bottom of the soup.
I'm gonna lift those brown bits up with some wine.
Stir your mushrooms around a little bit
to move everything out of the way.
Then, pour a little wine in,
and scrape the bottom of that pan to get all the bits up.
The wine's going to add a nice flavor, too, to the soup.
Just a few splashes of wine,
just to get things moving.
All righty, that looks good.
Okay, now I'm ready to add my vegetable broth.
I prefer vegetable broth,
that way the flavors just don't get muckied-up.
Okay, and my next ingredient is gonna be thyme.
You don't want to add the stems of the thyme,
just the leaves.
So just take them and brush them off into here.
I'm adding a lot of thyme to this
because that's the other wonderful herb
that's going to flavor this soup.
Give that a swirl, and then leave that to cook down
and come together for oh, about 20 minutes or so.
And while that soup does come together,
I've got another element of the lunch
which is a socca.
It's made with chickpea flour
so it's going to be gluten-free,
which I'm sure these guys are not concerned about at all.
So, let me just get cleaned up here,
get the oven pre-heated,
and we'll start on the socca.
(slow banjo music)
The socca is really simple,
One cup of chickpea flour,
one cup of lukewarm water, right into there.
And then, you're going to whisk this together
just to get all the lumps out, too.
And this is a very versatile recipe, too.
You can mix things in,
if you want to mix some herbs into your batter,
whatever you want to do, have fun with it.
And I'm going to serve this with some greens
and some lettuces on top.
You can just eat it as is, with a little bit of pesto.
Now this mixed up really nice,
so I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil,
about 2 tablespoons.
I'm gonna eyeball it.
And a pinch of salt, and stir that in.
The consistency that you're looking for
is heavy whipped cream.
So, you know, it's a nice consistency.
But it's going to be very light and battery.
All right, well that's the consistency
that I wanted it to be.
I'm going to let this sit and rest for a little bit
while my cast iron skillet heats up in the oven.
And then we'll be ready for the next step.
Okay, so this was in the oven pre-heating
and it's really, really hot and heavy.
But, I'm just going to put a few tablespoons
of olive oil in this hot pan,
swirl it around a bit,
and then put my batter in here to start cooking.
And here we go.
Look at that sizzle.
Now, swirl this around your pan,
and get it back under the broiler
for about five minutes.
All right, this is looking really good.
See how it's just nice and lightly browned on the top,
that's what we're looking for.
And it's separated from the pan,
so I know I used enough oil.
Now, this is kind of--
Everyone just cross their fingers.
Make sure this didn't stick to the bottom.
Oh, it did a little.
It's gonna be worth it.
Hold on.
And we got most of it.
And that's better than nothing.
Okay, let me get this pan out of my way.
So, we're just going to assemble it back together,
no one will know, and put it in the center of our plate.
Now, when it's still hot,
it's ready to get all the juices that it needs to have,
so what I'm going to do is
I have a pesto that I made and froze from last summer.
Pesto freezes really well.
Make sure you make a bunch in the summertime
so you've got it all year long.
Spread this out nice and evenly
all over the bottom of this.
On top of the pesto,
I'm going to add a little bit of arugula
from the garden here, nice and pretty.
And then I took Carter's asparagus
and then I just boiled it,
stuck it in some cold water, stopped the cooking,
and cut it up into nice bite-sized pieces.
This is gonna be perfect on top of this.
And this is a nice spring-y dish
with the arugula and the asparagus.
Kalamata olives are gonna give this a nice bite.
I could eat red onions like apples,
so I put them on everything I can.
Little bit of shaved Parmesan,
goat cheese would be nice on this too.
And let's get some of these Sungolds going.
I think I'll just put these in half.
Spread them about.
I like these recipes that are really versatile,
so whatever is in the garden, you can put on here.
Sun-dried tomatoes would be great.
You can just mix and match to your little heart's desires
and it'll be perfect for you.
Little lemon zest, 'cause it's gonna go on the top of this.
I just love lemon zest.
Then we're going to cut this lemon in half.
Give it a good squeeze on top,
and a little bit of olive oil.
And salt and pepper too.
I'm going to cut these into wedges before I serve them,
but first I've got to finish the soup off.
So, salt and pepper,
and then, this is going to go to the side
until the soup is finished.
So now to finish up the soup,
it's very simple, but it's the most important part.
I'm going to puree the soup so that it's a nice silky texture.
And this is going to get messy, so bear with me.
I love these immersion blenders,
it just makes things so nice.
The mushrooms are breaking up nicely.
Well, that's looking really delicious.
I want to leave some bigger chunks
just to get the homemade feel
and to have a nice, succulent bite
of a larger piece of the mushroom.
The most important part of this soup-making
is to add lots of butter and cream at the end of it.
This is what makes soup taste good,
or this soup anyway.
And then you can go jogging afterward,
if you feel like it, that's fine, too.
But I think it makes the flavors so nice.
Butter makes everything taste better.
I always say it, but it's true.
Incorporate the butter in, and next is the cream.
You don't have to over-cream it.
I think that's perfect.
It's a nice color for me.
Then, lots of pepper, for me, is what I prefer.
Little bit of salt, stir that all in.
And I think we're done just in time,
'cause I can hear the tractors arriving in the driveway,
which means the guys are here for lunch.
(tractor engines)
Hi, guys!
- Nick: Dinner was served on vast long tables
that had been erected out in a nearby field.
We drank wine and chatted, ate pheasant and gnocchi,
and greens and fresh warm bread.
(applause)
- Inga: Spring has sprung,
decadent, delicious and down right good.
Creamy shiitake mushroom soup.
Socca: crisp, crusty and toasty,
topped with basil pesto and spicy spring arugula.
Ros� pairs nicely with the spring socca,
or for the young'uns, try ice cold milk.
Well, I hope the next time you have your friends over
for a book club party,
you'll make homemade soup, and socca.
And I hope you'll gather with us next time,
- all: Around the Farm Table .
(glasses clinking)
- I'm your host, Inga Witscher.
*
- Around the Farm Table is funded in part by
Wisconsin Farmers Union,
Heartland Credit Union
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.